“But if you do know what is taught by plants and weather, you are in on the gossip and can feel truly at home. The sum of a field’s forces [become] what we call very loosely the ‘spirit of the place.’ To know the spirit of a place is to realize that you are a part of a part and that the whole is made of parts, each of which in a whole. You start with the part you are whole in.”
― Gary Snyder, The Gary Snyder Reader (1952-1998): Prose, Poetry and Translations

Thoughts on the Kindreds. Seems equally applicable to earth spirits and ancestors, in different ways.